The result of these successes was to cow and terrify the Senecas, who came to Johnson Hall and made peace. General Gage vigourously pressed operations against the hostile tribes, and sent Bradstreet westward. As a reinforcement, Johnson persuaded over five hundred of the Confederate Iroquois to join Bradstreet. He then went himself to Niagara, arriving July 8, 1764, to hold a grand council with all the Indians favourable to the English cause, from Dakota to Hudson Bay, and from Maine to Kentucky. Besides a treaty of peace with the Hurons, the earth-hunger of the pale-faces was temporarily satisfied by a cession of land along the lakes, accompanied with the promise of protection to navigation. The Senecas also ceded, not for private use, but to the Crown, a strip of land eight miles wide between Lakes Erie and Ontario, bisected by the Niagara River. They made a promise of the islands in the river to Johnson himself, who immediately transferred them to the British Government. A considerable number of white prisoners were delivered up. In this policy of possibly mistaken kindness, in which the change of life to those who had forgotten their old home and friends and had become habituated to Indian life, was like a resurrection, there were many incidents like those upon which Cooper has founded his romance of “The Wept of the Wish-ton-wish.” Johnson’s advertisement to friends of the captives is one of the pathetic curiosities in the American journalism of the eighteenth century.
After interviews between Johnson’s agent, Croghan, and Pontiac, arrangements were made for the amicable dwelling together of the two races. Johnson had proposed to the Lords of Trade in London that the territory west of the Ohio River should be forever reserved to the Six Nations as a hunting-ground. Another great council was held at his house April 27, at which over nine hundred Indians, including one hundred and twenty Senecas, the Delaware chiefs Squash-Cutter and Long-Coat, were present. The various conferences lasted nearly a month, resulting in a fresh treaty of peace with the Western Indians. They covenanted to allow the boundary to be made, protect traders, allow the passage of troops, deliver up murderers to the nearest garrison, and endeavour to win over the Illinois tribes. Later, Croghan, the agent of Johnson, visited Detroit, on the way collecting the white captives delivered up, and meeting the penitent Pontiac, who of his own accord made overtures of peace and accompanied Croghan. On the 17th of August, at Detroit, he met the Ottawas, Pottawatamies, and Chippewas, and in one of several conferences presented Johnson’s road-belt to “open the path of the English from the rising to the setting sun.” Ten days later, on the 27th, with Pontiac and the tribes of the great Ottawa Confederacy, the war-hatchet was buried, the tree of peace planted, and the calumet of peace smoked. Pontiac even gave a promise to visit Johnson at Oswego to ratify the peace thus made. The road being cleared for the passage of the troops, Captain Sterling, with one hundred Highlanders from Fort Pitt, received possession, October 10, of Fort Chartres, and the French flag was hauled down.
True to his promise, Pontiac met Johnson at Oswego July 23. Amid every possible accessory of impressive display and ceremony, the sacramental wampum, the sacred promises of peace and tokens of friendship were exchanged. Then Pontiac and his braves moved out in their canoes over Lake Ontario to the west and to obscurity. Henceforth the way of Teutonic civilization was cleared, and the march to the Pacific began. As we write in 1891, the centre of population is near Chicago.
In October, 1768, the great council called for the purpose of making a scientific frontier met at Fort Stanwix. This great concourse, not only of Indians, but of the governors and other distinguished men of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, makes one of the historical pictures in the story of America well worth the artist’s interpretation on canvas. Johnson, being at this time heartily interested in the welfare of St. George’s Episcopal Church, built next to the British barracks in Schenectady, in which he was a frequent worshipper, profited by the presence and happy mood of so many prominent men. He took up a collection, and secured sixty-one pounds and ten shillings for the little stone church on whose spire in Ferry Street still veers the gilded cock of St. Nicholas, the symbol of vigilance and of the resurrection.
Of the Six Nations and other tribes, thirty-two hundred individuals were present to witness the bartering away of their birthright for such pottage as the pale-faces had to tempt these Esaus of the wilderness. For ten thousand pounds, unlimited rum, and after due exchange of eloquence and wampum, they sold to the king the ground now occupied by Kentucky, Western Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania. Fort Stanwix was dismantled. The Indians moved out of Eastern New York, and the next year Daniel Boone led that great emigration of white men from the Southern Atlantic coast which resulted in the winning of the West. Boone’s was a movement for the annihilation of savagery, the extinction of Latin, and the supremacy of Teutonic civilization in North America, parallel to that rolling westward from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania.
This was the last of the most important meetings and negotiations of Johnson with the men who claimed by hereditary right to occupy the continent. Though afterward full of toilsome detail, and busy in conference, in hearing complaints, and securing the performance of stipulations, Johnson’s constructive career as Superintendent of Indian Affairs virtually closed at Fort Stanwix.
CHAPTER XII.
LIFE AT JOHNSON HALL.
The last ten years of Johnson’s life were among the busiest of his career. War matters occupied but a portion of his time. His greater works were those of peace, his chief idea being the development in civilization of the region watered by the Mohawk and its tributaries. The story of his life now concerns itself with the location of settlers; the education of the Indians; the building of schools, churches, and colleges; the improvement of land and live-stock; the promotion of agriculture, and of the arts and comforts of life. In a word, none more than he carried out the command to replenish the earth and possess it.
Fortune seemed to have no frowns for this one of the chief Makers of America. Popular with his neighbours, and appreciated on the other side of the ocean, his rewards were many. Besides the gift of five thousand pounds accompanying the title of baronet, the king, in June, 1769, made over to him the famous “royal grant” of sixty-six thousand acres on the north side of the river between the East and West Canada creeks, the present town of Little Falls being in the southern centre. This large piece of territory had been given him by the Mohawks in 1760, as a token of their gratitude and appreciation, Johnson making return for the gift in a sum amounting to over twelve thousand dollars. As no private person could, under the proclamation of 1763, obtain in any way so large a tract of land, the possession was made sure by being given under the royal seal and approbation as a token of his services.
It was, however, as early as 1763 that Johnson chose the site on which to found the village of Johnstown, and to erect Johnson Hall,—as a letter dated May 8, 1763, to Mr. Samuel Fuller, of Schenectady, the architect and builder, shows. Like his former house on the Mohawk, this edifice, so famed in romance and history, still stands, though outwardly somewhat altered in appearance by the addition of modern roofs, bay-windows, portico, and verandas. Only one of the two square towers or houses which flanked the main edifice still remains.